Good excuse though – just put a new site together the Brighton branch of the NUJ.

Check out my handywork here – http://www.nujbrighton.org.uk.

Mood: Stressed out, not sleeping well. Why do I deal with stress by taking on more work?

Worried about M. Worried about A. Worried about my eyes and still haven’t book a doctor’s appointment.

Just had a bath. Wearing pink pyjamas and sheepskin boots.

Did a couple of journalism exams today and they went OK, but it meant I got home at a proper time. It felt very strange to be walking home with everyone else who had just finished work, rather than walking home while everyone you see is going out for the evening.

Watched telly from 5.15 onwards. Managed to get to 5.50 before turning my computer on…

Now plan to sign off and skin up.

Wanted to list all the things I’m worrying about, but then decided against it. Instead, here’s a list of some of the things on my desk:

• Old laptop (using it as a very heavy unattractive paperweight)
• Pot of brown fountain pen ink (have lost fountain pen, alas)
• Lovely letter from my old boss at Burgh Island
• Notes about random Hungarian words
• A model blue whale I’ve had since I was 8
• Stamps for recycling
• Ten video tapes from Cuba that I need to watch, edit and save on DVD
• Lost Vagueness membership card (Glastonbury trophy)
• Shorthand notebook
• WSPU poster in need of a frame
• Magazine about Cornish arts
• Brochure about woodland burials
• And a quote from Marcus Aurelius: “Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. All things are petty, easily changed, vanishing away”

I was at Victoria station staring up at the train timetables and couldn’t make them out at all. It wasn’t until I was right underneath them – looking like I was in the Burger King queue – that I could actually read the board.

Don’t really understand that as I had an eye test in the Spring and I didn’t need glasses then. Better book another one…

I wonder how much more I can give to you all. Can I have something back?

Where are you?

Gold letters, written on a wall. Drinking alone, busy pub.

Sitting on a kerb halfway up the hill, side-by-side, watching fireworks through a gap in the houses.

Every explosion beautiful but doomed to die. Each spot heavy, fading, dissolved and disappeared.

Hundreds of tiny flames left hanging in the sky, drifting for a second, and then nothing.

Can’t stop crying.

“That this house notes with sadness the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks, on February 26th 1994, at the age of 33; recalls his assertion that his words would be a bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism and the American Dream; and mourns the passing of one of the few people who may be mentioned as being worthy of inclusion with Lenny Bruce in any list of unflinching and painfully honest political philosophers.” – Stephen Pound MP; Parliamentary House of Commons

Seldom does a day go by when I don’t think of, quote or listen to Bill Hicks. Wish you were here now, you big shaggy, smelly old thing you.

Frankly, anything that makes this country more American is a bad idea. That includes casinos.

The Good Doctor calls it a little too soon.

Fuck Bush and his warmongers.

Fuck arms deals, war for oil, murdering rednecks, planet fuckers, Christian soul-suckers, election bribes and empty fucking Hollywood shit. Fuck your fake fucking plastic lives, your big fucking cars and your fake fucking facelifts.

Fuck dead American soldiers in Iraq – fuck those hired killers. Fuck four more years of this selfish, greedy, paranoid, ignorant, evil fucking empire.

Fuck four more years of George W Bush.

I worried that mud and stones slipped into the hole as we lowered her down, straps scraping against the sides of the grave. The coffin was so new and clean, lying at the bottom; it didn’t seem right that it should be dirty.

The whole ceremony was so practical. No stranger reading irrelevant verses about someone they never knew, no blackness, no sickly flowers. Just the people that she really cared about, he said.

It feels a really logical part of this process that I am trying to understand; the weight of her body on the bier as we wheeled it through the wood, over roots and leaves, autumn sunlight. Picked a blackberry from beside the path as we wheeled along. Feeling her weight as we lowered her into the ground.

Standing quietly, waiting for whatever came next. Crying.

M was there, a delight as always. Took my hand and led me along the path. Too young to know, falling over, playing with leaves, smiling.

Observing this process, but I don’t understand it. Heaviness, and helplessness.

I feel she is watching me.